Question:
Conservatives call for return to core Republican principles
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: January 10 2006 19:45 | Last updated: January 10 2006 19:45
With Republicans embroiled in an influence-peddling scandal that could threaten their control of Congress, the biggest pressure for reform is coming from lawmakers who charge that the party’s woes have come from abandoning its core conservative principles.
Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican congressman who co-led the petition drive that helped oust Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, said in an interview yesterday: “We don’t just need a new majority leader, we need a course correction.
“A lobbyist can’t be corrupt unless he has somebody to bribe, and we’ve created a culture that just breeds corruption,” he charged.
While the Republicans captured the House of Representatives in 1994 following a popular backlash against perceived corruption in the Democratic party, the party’s conservative critics say it has now fallen prey to the same Washington culture. A group of more than 100 members organised as the Republican Study Committee is hoping to use the leadership race to rein in what they see as runaway government spending championed by Mr DeLay and his allies.
At the top of the conservative reform agenda is an end to the practice of earmarking, in which members can secretly insert into huge spending bills billions of dollars in projects for favoured companies or other constituents – many of whom in turn donate to the lawmakers’ re-election funds. While the practice is not new, it has mushroomed since Republicans captured Congress. Last year 15,000 earmarks were added into various spending bills.
Legislators are facing growing pressure over the practice. Jerry Lewis, the Republican who chairs the House appropriations committee, is under fire after the San Diego Union-Tribune reported he had earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to clients of a former colleague and lobbyist, Bill Lowery.
Mr Flake predicted the fallout over earmarking “would be ugly, and if we haven’t addressed it prospectively, we’re in deeper trouble than we know”.
The conservatives are also hoping to reform the congressional budgeting process by sharply reducing the use of “emergency” spending bills, such as those that have paid for the war in Iraq and rebuilding following Hurricane Katrina. They would also reform House rules to allow more challenges to spending bills that exceed agreed budget targets, and to ensure that such bills can be carefully reviewed by lawmakers before votes are held.
Mr Flake and other conservatives have yet to find a leadership candidate who stands clearly for their cause, however. Mike Pence, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, has said he will not seek the leadership. Conservatives are hoping to draft John Shadegg, another Arizona Republican.
Neither of the frontrunners, John Boehner of Ohio or the acting majority leader, Roy Blunt, appears an obvious champion for the conservatives. In a letter this week announcing his candidacy, Mr Boehner did not sketch out an aggressive reform plan, saying instead: “I think we need to engage in a bit of renewal.”
Mr Blunt, an ally of Mr DeLay, is part of the Republican leadership. But Mr Flake said that on the issue of earmarking “there’s a stark difference between the two. John Boehner has never put an earmark in an appropriation bill.” Mr Blunt, in contrast, “is an unapologetic champion of earmarks”, he said.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/cf26b6b2-820b-11d...00779e2340.html
Answer:
they can start by marginalizing the Neoconservatives who've brought in alot of left wing ideals.
Answer:
they can start by marginalizing the Neoconservatives who've brought in alot of left wing ideals.
i could only hope. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)
Answer:
i could only hope. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)
Since we're on the subject on core republican principles, I might as well speak my mind about it. From my experience and views.. the one thing I respect about the Republican Party is that I find more diversity and a bit more freedom in viewpoints among them.. where as Democrats have became increasingly more liberal and more cookie cutter in their view points. While I admittedly still tend to side with the Dems, there's alot of stuff about them that I don't like. Likewise, I often find myself reading articles, books, and opinions from Paleoconservatives like Buchanan and Dobbs, and from Libertarians such as Ron Paul, Flake and Fred Reed.. types of people usually considered as Republican or at least, to the right. While I may not agree with everything they stand on, I generally like what they have to say and can find alot of agreement on a number of their stances. It is these people who still feel passionate on traditionally Republican stances such as smaller government and limited spending, and a more conservative interpretation of the constitution.
But then you have the Neocons.. who as Kristol describes as liberals mugged by reality. While they may have switched parties and distanced themselves from their liberal, Strauss, & Trotskyite roots.. they still retain alot of leftist elements. One day I decided to see their stances on things to better understand them.. I began reading articles on their site (PNAC), such as RAD, etc.. and while their views are perfectly logical, it seemed very impractical.. infact for a group who claims to be more realistic, I find that their optimism in achieving their unipolar and unilateral goals to be far removed from reality. They are overly dedicated to foreign policy, and seem to be removed from domestic issues (i.e Immigration, etc).. infact what little they do mention about it, reveals a left stance such as preserving a big government (and making it bigger), while having no real stances on issues other Conservatives feel strongly on such as homosexuals, stem cells, affirmative action, etc. Another issue I have is how they intend to sustain America in the long run..
Liberals like big gov't spending and raising taxes. Conservatives like smaller government, limited spending, and tax cuts. Both sound perfectly reasonable.. but the Neocons seem to take the worst aspects.. big gov't, big spending, but maintaining tax cuts. As Flake said it's got to be one or the other. Many Libertarians I've talked to also agree that it should be one or the other (although they would obviously prefer smaller spending and tax cuts).
Then there's main stream conservative media. While there's nothing wrong with conservative leaning media.. but it does seems that many outlets of conservative media will simply defend an overwhelming majority of the decisions made by this administration, even those that have its roots in the Neocon's long term goals (i.e foreign policy). They are also quick to attack those who go against neoconservative thinking, usually passing them off as isolationists or downright traitors. People such as Chuck Hagel and McCain are quickly demonized and labled as liberals simply because they went against the mainstream.. They are hardly liberal as they both stand firm on traditional conservative issues such as abortion, smaller spending and limited government.. hardly anything liberal. It's also ironic that many would defend the neocons and demonize the left as commies when the Neocons themselves were Trotskyites.
In the end.. the next Republican candidates for 2008 would probably be another neoconservative leaning Republican. And the Democrats? Probably another neoconservative (who hasn't left the Democratic party) leaning party. The Clinton administration saw a large number of neocons being appointed by Clinton (i.e Cohen, Kagan, Woolsey, etc). And while Clinton did show reluctance to follow their philosophies, he eventually did anyways. example: Kosovo was widely viewed as a useless war by many conservatives, however many neoconservatives defended it. You can find numerous statements and articles written by them on the PNAC site where they condemn fellow Republicans as isolationists. It also fits in with RAD as they seek permanent American presence in the S.W Europe (aka Balkans/Turkey). Too many Democrat supporters fail to see this association and support Clinton for the sake of simply because he is a Democrat.
Answer:
In the end.. the next Republican candidates for 2008 would probably be another neoconservative leaning Republican.
One can only pray that someone better is nominated... now if only people would take charge of their communities.
Answer:
good luck to them!!!
(even though I'm not a republican, haha)
Answer:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/p...n/?id=110007767
PEGGY NOONAN
The Steamroller
The road to big government reaches a dead end at Jack Abramoff.
Thursday, January 5, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The problem with government is that it is run by people, and people are flawed. They are not virtue machines. We are all of us, even the best of us, vulnerable to the call of the low: to greed, conceit, insensitivity, ruthlessness, the desire to show you're in control, in charge, in command.
If the problem with government is that it is run by people and not, as James Madison put it, angels, the problem with big government is that it is run by a lot of people who are not angels. They can, together and in the aggregate, do much mischief. They can and inevitably will produce a great deal of injustice, corruption and heartlessness.
People in government--people in a huge, sprawling government--often get carried away. And they don't always even mean to. But they are little tiny parts of a large and overwhelming thing. If government is a steamroller, and that is in good part how I see it, the individuals who work in it are the atoms in the steel. The force of forward motion carries them along. There is inevitably an unaccountability, and in time often an indifference about what the steamroller rolls over. All the busy little atoms are watching each other, competing with each other, winning one for their little cluster. And no one is looking out and being protective of what the steamroller is rolling over--traditions, shared beliefs, individual rights, old assumptions, whatever is being rolled over today.
This is essentially why conservatives of my generation and earlier generations don't like big government. They don't even like government. We know we have to have one, that it is necessary, that it can and must do good, that it has real responsibilities that must be met. Madison again, in Federalist 51: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
These are wise words.
But conservatives are not supposed to like big government. It's not our job. We're supposed to like freedom and the rights of the individual. (Individuals aren't virtue machines either, but they're less powerful than governments and so generally less damaging.) We're supposed to be on the side of the grass the steamroller flattens.
Twenty-five years ago this month the conservative movement came to Washington, and much good came of its arrival. The argument against big government--its big taxing and big regulating, its bias toward a kind of enforced cultural conformity--was made again and again. The growth of government slowed, its demands to some degree beaten back.
The leadership of the Republican Party was now, in its avowed aims if not its daily practices, antigovernment. The party that was, in its daily operations if not always its avowed intentions, pro-government, the Democrats, remained in effective control of Congress and the courts.
There was progress in the 1980s. The steamroller slowed.
Eleven years ago this month came the Gingrich revolution and the Contract With America. That contract could be boiled down to these words: Stop the Steamroller. Take away its gas, make it smaller, term-limit it. Be on the side of the grass. This movement too did good work--it actually forced upon the federal government a balanced budget--but in the end results were mixed, as political results tend to be. The steamroller rolled on.
What followed was the trauma of the end of the Clinton years, the 2000 election, the Bush administration, and the historic rise in the antisteamroller party of a new operating assumption: that the steamroller will always be with us. And that if it is destined to become always and every year bigger, heavier and more powerful, then you might as well relax and learn how to run it, how to drive it and direct it. Make friends with the steamroller. Run it to your own ends and not the other team's.
This was understandable, especially after 9/11. Defense is expensive; technology has its own demands; the stakes are high.
And yet. All other parts of the government grew. The size and force of it grew in ways that were not at all necessary or crucial.
And learning to accept the steamroller, learning to direct the steamroller, learning in fact to love the steamroller, can get you to some bad places. It can get you to Jack Abramoff. To more size, more action, more corruption. To flawed people who are essentially unaccountable and busy winning their own victories for their own cluster. I got mine. You got yours?
Political corruption is always more likely when you fall in love with the steamroller. Or if not loving it accepting it, being realistic about it, embracing it.
There's a lot of talk among Republicans that since the Abramoff scandal involves politicians and staff on both sides of the aisle, the public will not punish the Republicans. This assertion is countered by the argument that while the public will likely see the story as one of government corruption, Congress and the White House are run by Republicans, so Republicans will pay the price. I think this is true, but I think it misses a larger point: In some rough way the public expects the party that loves big government to be pretty good at finagling government, playing with it, using it for its own ends. That's kind of what they do. They love the steamroller, of course they love the grease that makes it run. But the anti-big-government party isn't supposed to be so good at it, so enmeshed in it. The antigovernment party isn't supposed to be so good at oiling the steamroller's parts and pushing its levers. And so happy doing the oiling and pushing.
It isn't good to love the steamroller. In the end it can roll right over you, and all you stand for, or stood for.
Is there a way for Republicans to go? Stop trying to fit in. Stop being another atom in the steel. It does no good trying to run a better steamroller. It won't work. Steamrollers are not your friend.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father, just out from Penguin, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
